


Never Now

by Leyenn



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>never antagonise the one who could as easily kill you as kiss you</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Now

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for the alternate universe of _Endgame_.

He asked and she came, but not for him or what they had. She only came for _her_.

The park was pitch black, that sort of darkness that fights to swallow anyone foolish enough to be out among its twisted trees. Not where Starfleet Admirals should be seen on a fall night, which was mainly the point.

She waited a precise six minutes and fifty-three seconds for the snap of twigs and a flash of torchlight sweeping over her head, and then stood.

"Kathryn."

She didn't bother with his name. "You have something to say, after all this time?"

"I thought I'd leave that to you." The blackness shadowed his smirk, the burn in his eyes. "After all this time."

She brushed a leaf from her shoulder. "You'd be lucky."

"Maybe I would be." The torch died in silence. "Maybe I would have been, if it wasn't for you."

She curled her lip. "And I thought your people believed in destiny."

His voice was closer. She felt the air move. "I thought we had a chance together, Kathryn."

A glimpse of moonlight brought them closer, although she didn't move more than a breath. "Then I guess we were both wrong."

Shadows touched his greying hair as he stepped around her, standing there. "I could have loved you," she heard, only a tremulous truth here and now, and his voice bare inches from her ear. She gripped her Borg-enhanced phaser and let only a sigh from her lips.

"You were my friend, Chakotay. What happened?"

Rough hands pressed to her shoulder, her free wrist, fitting over skin long smoothed by gentle steel-tipped fingers. "I wanted you." And she couldn't understand which of them he meant.

"You wanted what you couldn't have."

"I wanted what you took from me." Metal at her neck, sharp, cool against her prickling skin. "You, and her..."

Always about this, just old pain in new places. Enough now. "You took advantage of her." Blood trickled where the phaser cut viciously into her palm. "She was a _child_ back then, and you knew it."

A harsh laugh. "Oh, but not a child when she came to you, Kathryn?"

_Yes._ She turned the phaser, sticky, gripped in her fingers. Yes, still a child, afraid and alone, with tear streaks on her pale face when she accepted home and a listening ear and later a warm embrace to hold her at night. A woman-child without understanding for the need that swamped her like a storm in her soul, unrelenting, flying from his neverending pursuit. "No, not when she left you."

The knife stroked her cheek and softly bit. The words were felt more than heard, slithering over her skin. "But then you were my friend, Kathryn. I think you even tried to kiss me once, do you remember that?"

The phaser kissed grey cloth and whined a lament. She turned and put her palm tenderly to his lost face, with a blood-pale mark left behind. "You must have imagined it."

  


*

  



End file.
